“Tagging” is a process that enables a user to associate keywords or phrases (“tags”) with a digital media file such as a digital image. The tags are generally keywords or phrases that are descriptive of the content of the digital image. For example, a user may apply the tags “1st B-Day” and “Garrett” to a digital image, or digital picture, of the user's child at the child's first birthday party. Once the images in an image collection are tagged, the user may then search the image collection for desired images based on the tags.
One issue with traditional tagging is that no two users have the same tagging vocabulary. For example, if two family members take pictures at a family gathering on Christmas, one of the family members may apply tags such as “Christmas” and “Andrew” to his images while the other family member may apply the tag “X-Mas” and “Andy” to her images. As a result of varying tagging vocabularies, when users share images using any of the popular photo-sharing services, the shared images cannot be easily searched based on tags. Thus, there is a need for a system and method for tagging images with group level tags such that images shared among members of a group can easily be searched using a single tagging vocabulary.